


snow, bergamot, spring

by laughtales



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: 5+1 sort of, Comfort with a dash of angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sylvix Week 2020 (Fire Emblem), mentions of abuse courtesy of miklan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26621869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughtales/pseuds/laughtales
Summary: Felix feels safe and wanted and loved surrounded by the smell of snow, bergamot, and spring..The times Felix doesn't like the way Sylvain smells.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 8
Kudos: 78
Collections: Sylvix Week 2020 Fic Collection





	snow, bergamot, spring

**Author's Note:**

> The first of two contributions for Sylvix Week 2020! 
> 
> This was written with days 2 (pining/longing), 3 (injuries/healing), and 4 (warmth) in mind but I guess it hits day 1 (after the war) and 7 (childhood) too since I've got nothing for those days;; I've been sitting on this concept for a while now and I'm pretty happy with how it came out despite writer's block! I hope you enjoy :)

_Felix is nine when they comb the frozen mountains of Gautier and find Sylvain half buried in the snow. They only find him because his hair blooms bright and vibrant against the blacks and whites of the landscape. A small splotch of red against a fresh white canvas – shivering, fragile, delirious._

_It must be the borrowed cloak he’s carrying, held tightly to his chest as Glenn digs Sylvain out, Gautier colors flooding Sylvain’s blurry vision as Felix sobs over him._

_“You came back,” Sylvain says, weak and broken and relieved, before his eyes close and Felix wails his name into the sky._

_When Felix sneaks into Sylvain’s room that night and crawls under the layers and layers of blankets he’s buried under and Sylvain wakes long enough to smile and pat the space next to him in invitation, he holds onto Sylvain’s hand as they fall asleep surrounded in the smell of snow and citrus and spring._

“You smell like shit.” A grimace twists onto Felix’s face and he keeps Sylvain at bay with a point of his training sword.

Sylvain sniffs at his sleeve and then his shirt. Felix drags his eyes away from the extra sliver of skin that’s revealed from the motion.

“Oh! I just came from stable duty,” Sylvain says as if solving a complex riddle. “I guess I’m used to the smell so I didn’t notice.”

“You don’t us-” Felix bites his words at Sylvain’s curious head tilt. It’s too revealing, the rest of that sentence, so he finishes his aborted breath and tries again. “Were you rolling around in there or something? You smell like literal shit.”

“Nah, didn’t get that far. She slapped me and I stumbled, stronger than she looks, that one,” Sylvain murmurs, touching his cheek. “I didn’t want to fall into the horse and startle her. Did you know she’s pregnant? Pretty far along from the looks of it. She’s gorgeous. Lyra has the prettiest eyes. The foal is going to be so cute.”

“I don’t care about the horse. Or your trysts in the stables,” Felix says dryly. He hadn’t meant his question literally. But now that knowledge is stuck in his head and it burns more than just his imagination. He pushes his way past Sylvain, unable to be around him any longer.

The way Sylvain catches his wrist and says _I’m sorry_ is little consolation for the way Felix feels. He doesn’t want -doesn’t need- Sylvain’s apology or the sincerity in the way he says it, but he’s never going to get what he wants anyway so he shrugs him off with _it’s fine,_ and continues on his way.

He ignores the dull ache in his chest that lingers until he’s out of Sylvain’s sight.

It’s been two days since Conand Tower.

Two days since Felix last saw Sylvain, standing over the cooling body of his brother with an expression he couldn’t read and asking quietly for Felix's help burying him.

Felix knocks on Sylvain’s door and waits for three seconds before letting himself in.

He’s immediately assaulted with the thick and heavy stench of alcohol.

“Have you been drinking?” Felix asks, staring down at Sylvain who’s slouched on the floor, leaning against his bed. It comes out sharper than he means, unable to keep the disdain out of his voice.

Sylvain peers up at him, eyes dazed and unseeing. He gestures to the near-empty bottle on the ground and shrugs, chuckling pathetically.

“Are you drunk?”

“Wish I was.” His words are only a little bit slurred.

Felix sighs, picking up the bottle and setting it out of the way before it can stain the carpet.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Sylvain smiles, a little broken and a lot fragile, a far cry from the charming slope of his lips when he’s wooing girls left and right, and pats the ground next to him.

“Maybe another time,” he says as Felix sinks into the space beside him.

“What do you need?”

Silence fills the room and Felix almost thinks that Sylvain fell asleep. But then he sways and his head rests on Felix’s shoulder, tentatively at first, and then, when Felix doesn’t push him off, he relaxes into the gesture.

“Something you won’t give.”

Felix’s breath hitches.

“I’m not bringing you more wine.” The words unstick from his throat and sit sourly on his tongue.

The chuckle Sylvain makes feels like a stab to the heart.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

It’s cold. Not as cold as Faerghus, but it’s still the Ethereal Moon and his breath comes out in clouds.

Behind him, the ball is in full swing with loud music and chatter and dancing. He had finished his courtesy dances with Ingrid and Annette and Mercedes as quickly as possible before slipping away.

The balcony is a small reprieve from the festivities and he’d rather head back to his room or spend the time training, but when he looked, Sylvain was dancing with some girl by the exit.

It’s not jealousy. It’s not. That’s not what the ache in his chest is when he sees the way Sylvain smiles at her, fake and polite. Or the way she shrieks and giggles, holding him tight when he dips her. Or the way she blushes and shuffles on her feet when Sylvain kisses the back of her hand with a bow.

It’s that he doesn’t want to dance with Sylvain because that’s surely what’s going to happen when Sylvain catches him.

It’s foolish.

Felix shivers as a breeze blows past and suddenly he’s engulfed in warmth and citrus and a memory of sleeping under an overwhelming number of blankets.

Sylvain’s jacket is wrapped around his shoulders and the man himself is smiling next to him. A real smile, in all its lopsidedness and the way it makes the corners of his eyes crinkle.

“What are you doing?”

Sylvain shrugs and huffs a cloud of warm breath into the air, watching it scatter. “It’s cold,” he says like he isn’t only in a dress shirt with buttons undone.

But then again, Sylvain’s always run warm and liked the cold. They’d all be bundled head to toe in furs when they visited Gautier as kids and Sylvain would be there with a coat and a scarf and no matter how much they rolled in the snow, his hands were always warm when he’d press them to their frigid cheeks.

“Shouldn’t you be in there dancing?” Felix asks, pulling the jacket a little tighter around himself.

“Taking a break,” Sylvain says. “Plus I couldn’t find my dance partner.”

“You have your pick of the lot. I’m sure there are girls lining up to dance with you.”

Sylvain hums in considered agreement. “Yeah, but they’re not who I want to dance with.”

 _Who do you want to dance with,_ Felix thinks although he has his suspicions. He considers it for a second, lowering his head into the collar of Sylvain’s jacket when a sickly-sweet smell wafts into his nose. He jerks away, unable to escape the scent now that it’s in his lungs, and he pulls Sylvain’s jacket off and thrusts it back into his hands.

“I’m leaving.” He exhales deeply, trying to purge the smell from his senses and turns away.

The call of his name in Sylvain’s voice, the disappointment in it pierces through him, but if he were to dance with Sylvain now, all he’d think about would be the girls that came before and their perfume clinging to his clothes and skin and the thought makes him nauseous. 

He’d rather have nothing at all than indulge and be one in the long line of Sylvain’s nothings.

If he knew this would be his last chance before a bloody war and five long years, maybe he’d have taken his hand and accepted the signs of a one-way street turned two.

Gronder is a hellscape through and through. Broken bodies of friend and foe alike litter the ground. Smoke and ash, blood and burned flesh. The central mound is gone, and the screams when it went up in flames echo in his ears.

Felix watches his father leave his final words for Dimitri, not a glance spared in his direction.

He tries to be bitter, he really does, but the bitterness he held for his father for all these years passes with his dying breath.

A hand comes down on his shoulder and Felix doesn’t need to turn to know who it is. It squeezes reassuringly and Felix steps a little closer, bringing his own down on top of it.

There’s loss and pain and a heavy weight bearing down on him, but Sylvain’s touch is warm even through the layers and threatens to shatter him only to piece him back together again.

And he’d let it happen, even though they’re covered in blood and grime and ash, the stench of death forever seeped into their war-worn clothes.

Around them, the world burns, but finally, finally there’s a light and path to their future.

_Felix is ten when he finds Sylvain at the bottom of an unused well, screams bouncing off the stone walls. When they pull him from its depths, he’s soaked to the bone and his fingers bleed from torn and ripped nails._

_Despite the water still dripping onto the cobblestone path, Felix hurls himself into Sylvain’s soggy chest. His tears disappear into the wetness of his shirt and Sylvain brings his arms hesitantly around, careful not to get any blood on him._

_“I knew you’d be the one to find me,” Sylvain says, warm and soft and relieved before they’re both whisked away for warm baths and dry clothes._

_When Felix holds Sylvain’s hands that night, the sharp and medicinal scent of herbs floods his nose and he presses himself closer into Sylvain’s side and searches desperately for snow and citrus and the smell of fresh straw._

He remembers that incident vividly. Not just because he found his best friend near-drowned and covered in blood, but the aftermath too. Of sharing a bed and holding his hand and breathing in a smell that doesn’t belong on Sylvain.

Felix runs his thumb along the back of Sylvain’s bandaged hand, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest as he sleeps. His expression is comfortable, even though the bandages wrapped around his torso look anything but.

The infirmary reeks of vulneraries and white magic. Felix holds his hand tighter.

It’s the end of the war, the first night of that _one day_ they spoke hypothetically of all those months ago, and here Sylvain lays, dead to the world and the way Felix brushes his lips against his knuckles. He presses the palm of Sylvain’s hand against his cheek and holds it there before drooping onto the bed and letting his eyes close, their fingers laced together beside his head.

The gentle squeeze against his hand brings a smile to his face and he pulls their hands ever so closer towards himself.

The skies are still dark out when Sylvain finds him on the balcony.

“I told you to wake me,” Sylvain says with a yawn, stretching out his limbs. He reaches Felix’s perch on the railing in four strides and wraps an arm around his shoulders. 

“It was still early.” Felix watches the puffs of their breaths dissipate, leaning into Sylvain’s side. It’s ridiculous how warm he runs, especially fresh out of bed, and how it contrasts against the frigid air.

Sylvain hums, drawing him closer still. “Still should’ve woken me up. It’s cold and lonely in bed without you.”

“If only you’re this agreeable when I ask you to train with me in the morning.”

“Not the same and you know it,” Sylvain pouts. “Watching the sunrise after first snow while cuddling is far more appealing than getting up to get sore and sweaty.”

Felix scoffs under his breath but a smile creeps onto his face regardless.

“Speaking of cuddling,” Sylvain says, removing his warmth cruelly from Felix’s side. “Got room under there for two?” Sylvain grins and gestures to the oversized cloak he’s currently cocooned in.

It’s Sylvain’s, obviously. His own aren’t nearly big enough or warm enough or lined impractically with excess furs.

“Maybe,” he says even though he’s already looking for the edges and holding it open. “Hurry up, you’re letting cold air in.”

Sylvain laughs, a warm bright thing, as he slips inside the cloak and wraps himself around him. A fresh waft of fresh snow and bergamot and straw curls around him as Sylvain takes the edges of the cloak from Felix’s hand and tugs it closed.

Felix closes his eyes, burying his nose into the crook of Sylvain’s neck. The end of the war brought many things. Peace. Responsibilities.

Sylvain, and Felix’s favorite smell.

They share a kiss, short and sweet, when the first rays of light paint the sky. Felix burrows further into Sylvain, sharing in calm, comfortable, familiar silence.

The sun sparkles off the frozen land and all around them, the world shines.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I am on [ Twitter ](https://twitter.com/laughtales_)if you want to drop by and chat with me about sylvix and you can give this fic a[ like/retweet here ](https://twitter.com/laughtales_/status/1308901994917224450?s=20) <3


End file.
